Gazette-Times editorial

We would have been entertained by the sight of a Corvallis Fire Department crew zipping out to douse a barbecue that has in some way offended a neighbor, but that seems unlikely to happen, even under new regulations approved by the City Council.

The council this week unanimously approved an amendment to the rules governing recreational fires. The amendment says, in part, that the fire department now can put out recreational fires if the fires are producing "offensive or objectionable smoke or odor emissions."

That language seems awfully broad - and, in fact, it might turn out that the language is much broader than it should be. It would seem that under that language, a neighbor could rat you out if your smoky-rib recipe turned out to be a little too smoky.

But, in fact, the goal of the amendment is not to force you to turn down your barbecue unit or even to think twice about using that tasteful new fire pit you just installed in the back yard. Rather, the rule means to tackle a certain kind of fire - let's call them, for lack of a better term, junk fires - that have been proliferating in neighborhoods around the Oregon State University campus.

These are fires that are fueled by whatever materials are on hand - plastic, garbage, that sofa that's been hanging out in the front yard for a couple of years. Considering the packed-in neighborhood where these fires tend to proliferate, they often are set too close to other structures, creating a fire hazard. And considering the type of fuel used to set the fires, they can generate noxious, irritating smoke.

Those are the fires that the city's new amendment aims to curb.

Still, we worry that the amendment has been crafted with much too broad a brush, so it's probably best that the city plans to soft-pedal enforcement, at least initially. Councilors say that the goal at first will be to emphasize outreach and education, not necessarily immediate dousing.

We have our doubts about this, but we'll see how it goes. And if the city can strike just the right tone with its outreach and education efforts, it might make for clearer skies and easier-breathing neighbors around campus.